In a race against the fading daylight, a 61-year-old hiker was rescued by helicopter Saturday night after falling nearly 20 metres down Mount Seymour in North Vancouver.

First responders received a call that a hiker had fallen near Tim Jones Peak, on the North Shore, Saturday evening. Because the call came so late and the light was fading, they faced a tight timeframe to rescue the injured man.

After spotting the hiker, the rescue team got as close to him as they could to assess his condition.

"He had been sitting there for quite a while; he was cold. He was in relatively rough shape," Jim Loree from North Shore Rescue said. The team eventually decided that they would conduct a long-line rescue with a spine board, because there were concerns about the hiker's injuries.

When the hiker was safely back on ground, he was rushed to hospital with serious injuries.

Loree said if the call had come in one minute later, it would not have been legal to fly the helicopter.

"We were really, really pushing the light window on this one," he said. "We had minimal time to spare and had we not been able to get him out by the means we did it could have been an all-night rescue."